Watch out Paypal, there’s a new Sheriff in town and his name is Checkout. Unlike a lot of Google inventions that are introduced and then orphaned off on the web, Google is promoting its Checkout heavily this holiday season, and the results its seeing are outstanding. Checkout is emerging as a serious competitor to Paypal in a big way.
Although Paypal’s market share is roughly 96 times larger than Checkout, sales using the Checkout payment system over the 2006 Thanksgiving holiday weekend closed the gap by a large volume, dropping Paypal’s share from being 96 times larger than Checkout to only 38 times larger by some estimates.
One reason for the sudden success of Checkout is that Google is currently offering merchants free use of Checkout through December 31, 2006 and has made special arrangments with some really big online merchants for the holiday season. During the Thanksgiving holidays ToysrUs was offering $10 off on $30 purchases if you used Checkout to make your payment. Google has also forged alliances with Petco, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Buy.com, Ace Hardware and Linens-n-Things. All of these companies have huge online businesses, thus giving Checkout a real workout.
One major test for Google in the future is whether or not it can ever unseat Paypal as the number one online payment service, given the fact that Ebay is not using, recommending or promoting Checkout. You may recall that Ebay purchased Paypal several years ago, so the battle between Checkout and Paypal is really a Battle Royale between Google and Ebay.
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